


You Give Me Butterflies

by rhysiana



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Lepidopterist!Derek, M/M, Social Media, grad student!Stiles, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 14:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14082588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: Stiles had only turned on the TV for background noise while he tried to finish up his thesis proposal before the next day’s meeting with his advisor, that was all. It was a nature documentary. About butterflies, no less. Bland, soothing, not at all distracting, just enough extra noise to help the rest of his overactive brain focus.Well, he was totally focused now, it just wasn’t on his thesis. Because now there was a man on his TV who wasverydistracting, talking about butterflies.***A story of entomology, procrastination, and nerdy flirting over the internet.





	You Give Me Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notenoughgatorade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenoughgatorade/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Бабочки в Моей Голове](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15060785) by [LonelyLikeACastaway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonelyLikeACastaway/pseuds/LonelyLikeACastaway)



> Written for notenoughgatorade's fun Glompfest prompt (based on [this original tumblr post](http://menderash.tumblr.com/post/156660806149/i-saw-a-really-cool-butterfly-expert-man-on-pbs)): “i saw a really cool butterfly expert man on PBS and was so in awe of him and his butterfly knowledge i tracked down the episode online to see how to spell his name and found his twitter and followed him, only for the next day to awaken to him having read not only my webcomic, but also my livetweets saying how i wanted to marry the butterfly man. he said he was flattered. anyway the moral of the story is please don’t underestimate how far down your twitter a bored entomologist will scroll, and also the internet was a mistake.” 
> 
> Beta and cheerleading thanks to hmslusitania, dizzyredhead, and staunchly_anonymous, and many thanks to cobrilee for coming up with the story title and Derek’s Twitter handle. Thanks as well to A, my entomology consultant, who is entirely responsible for the mention of the poor tomato hornworm and the phalloblaster article.
> 
> Rebloggable post with pretty graphic is [here](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/post/172240247368/you-give-me-butterflies)!

Stiles had only turned on the TV for background noise while he tried to finish up his thesis proposal before the next day’s meeting with his advisor, that was all. It was a nature documentary. About butterflies, no less. Bland, soothing, not at all distracting, just enough extra noise to help the rest of his overactive brain focus.

Focus. Fohhh-cussss…

Well, he was totally focused now, it just wasn’t on his thesis. Because now there was a man on his TV who was _very_ distracting, talking about butterflies.

“A lot of what attracts people to butterflies are the many vibrant colors of their wings, but I have to admit, my favorite butterfly color is black,” said the scruffy vision in the olive green hiking shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a move Stiles considered completely unfair. Everyone knew rolled-up sleeves increased a dude’s attractiveness threefold, _at least_ , plus the shirt brought out his eyes. Stiles was going to file a complaint. Butterfly Guy extended his hand to show off a really cool all-black butterfly, and then he _smiled down at it_ in enthusiasm, taking him from serious to endearingly dorky in about half a second.

Stiles’ first impulse was to call Scott and demand he turn on his TV, too, but Scott had told him just an hour ago that he wasn’t allowed to call again until he at least had an outline done. The faceless internet void of Twitter was still there for him, though. 

> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles  
>  There is a startlingly handsome entomologist on my television right now and it’s his fault I’m going to fail to finish my degree.  
>  |  
>  brb, switching to an entomology program now  
>  |  
>  Oh no, they’re interviewing him in his office now and he’s wearing *glasses*. They don’t even lie; he really does appear to be that smart. #MyKryptonite  
>  |  
>  Okay, he just started talking about how the black of butterfly wings is actually blacker than other blacks and I gotta go google that shit asap.  
>  |  
>  “… the black parts of the butterfly's wing are constructed of scales covered in pits less than a micrometre across, which make a honey-comb like pattern. These scales take advantage of refraction to trap light, much like a fibre-optic cable.”  
>  |  
>  Ooooh, and peacock feathers do a similar thing with green that also can’t be replicated. [nature.com/news/2004/040128/full/news040126-4.html](https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040128/full/news040126-4.html)  
>  |  
>  Did they use that research in developing Vantablack?  
>  |  
>  omg you guys, do yourselves a favor and google the Anish Kapoor vs Stuart Semple pigment war. #TheArtWorldIsWild  
>  |  
>  Oops, forgot to pause, totally missed the rest of that butterfly show. #HoorayForTheInternet  
>  |  
>  Good news, everyone, my future husband has a name and it is Derek Hale. He is very handsome and accomplished, according to his faculty bio page.  
>  |  
>  I take it back, we can’t get married, I’d be far too embarrassed to marry a guy with a PhD when I failed my MA because I spent all night scrolling his Twitter archive.  
>  |  
>  For real, though, I think I’m in love with his brain now.  
>  |  
>  …it’s 3am, my life is a disaster. I wonder if I’ll dream of butterflies tonight? This morning? #TomorrowIsTheTimeAfterISleep

***

When Stiles woke up at the crack of, uh—he reached for his phone to check the time—10 a.m., Twitter informed him he had a number of notifications. An oddly high number. At most, he’d thought he could expect a chiding reply from Scott about study habits and procrastination (not that he could talk; Stiles remembered exactly who had dragged whom through high school, thank you very much); there was no clearly apparent reason to have notifications in double digits. He rubbed his eyes and looked again.

“I need coffee,” he muttered, and managed a controlled fall out of bed to get started in the direction of the kitchen, phone still clutched in his hand.

Running on autopilot and muscle memory more than anything else, he managed to dump the previous day’s grounds and start a new pot, at which point he leaned over and made a nice pillow with his arms on the counter until the coffee maker beeped that it was ready. He reached up without looking and fished a mug out of the cabinet over his head, but then forced himself back upright to actually pour the coffee. He’d learned that lesson the hard way.

His phone buzzed again just as he took his first sip.

“Seriously?” he asked it, finally thumbing open the app. “What?”

> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  _Replying to_ @justcallmestiles  
>  Glad you enjoyed the show! Sorry to hear the wedding’s off. (I promise I make no judgments on the academic procrastination habits of others.)  
>  |  
>  Oh, good call on that Vantablack connection! #TeamSemple

Stiles stared at his phone in disbelief. The beautiful butterfly man had 1) noticed that Stiles had started following him on Twitter, 2) followed Stiles back, 3) found Stiles’ livetweet of his late-night ADHD spiral, and 4) _replied to it_. He gave up on supporting his own weight and slithered down the cabinets to sit on kitchen floor. Numbly, he opened a new tweet:

> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles  
>  Well, my morning just took a turn for the surreal. Relatedly, the internet was a mistake. #NeedMoreCaffeine

Gulping more of his coffee before it was really cool enough, he continued scrolling his notifications list and then nearly dropped the phone. “Oh, what the _hell_?” he asked the room at large, reddening in embarrassment even with no one else around to see.

> **Derek Hale** Retweeted your Tweet  
>  This is really cool!  
>  **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles  
>  Okay, here (finally) is a link to that cyberpunk Little Red Riding Hood comic I did for my final: stilesstyle.tumblr.com/post/…

It had been liked by several more people since then, two of them also named Hale.

He reached up to pull the whole coffee pot down to the floor with him. He was just going to live down here now. It was fine. The beautiful butterfly man, with his finished PhD and TV appearances and real functional adult life, was just going through Stiles’ entire Twitter archive and responding to things. Stiles wasn’t going to die of mortification or anything. Unfortunately.

He poured a fresh mug of coffee and swiped over to Derek Hale’s feed. As long as he was embarrassing himself, he might as well indulge properly.

> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch 2h  
>  Why did I agree to do this guest lecture? #IKnowWhy #IAmTooSusceptibleToGuiltTrips  
>  |  
>  Relatedly, let’s pour one out for the poor, beleaguered tomato hornworm, unfortunate workhorse of developmental biology.  
>  |  
>  Pro tip: Do NOT google Manduca sexta experiments if you’re squeamish.  
>  |  
>  Important question: How do I turn this into a ppt slideshow that won’t get me reprimanded for inducing mental anguish in all of BIO 105?  
>  |  
>  Note to self: Never do favors again.
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles 10m  
>  _Replying to_ @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  Too late, I totally googled it. Why would anyone do that?
> 
> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch 7m  
>  _Replying to_ @justcallmestiles  
>  Serious answer? To try to figure out how they produced “juvenile hormone,” which turns out to be similar to human puberty-inducing hormones.  
>  |  
>  But you can’t also convince me it wasn’t at least 75% just to see what would happen.
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles 5m  
>  _Replying to_ @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  In the spirit of a kid with a magnifying glass?
> 
> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch 4m  
>  _Replying to_ @justcallmestiles  
>  Exactly.

When Stiles finally levered himself off the kitchen floor, it was with a smile on his face. He made a mental note to tell Scott all his new horrifying entomology facts over Skype, so he could see his face and get the full reaction experience.

***

Derek’s phone rang and he foolishly answered without looking, an action he regretted immediately.

“Who is this guy you’re flirting with all over Twitter now, Derek?” Laura asked gleefully.

“What are you talking about? I’m not flirting with anyone.”

“What was his name again?” she yelled. He winced. She never actually bothered to cover the phone or turn her head away when she did that.

“Stiles Stilinski,” he heard Cora answer faintly in the background, and groaned. Both of them. He’d never get out of this conversation now.

“Yeah, Stiles Stilinski, who’s he?” Laura repeated.

“I don’t know, just a guy. He saw that PBS thing I was on and tweeted about it.”

“But then you liked all his stuff! You retweeted things!”

“I’m sorry, did I miss some Modern Love column where that was declared the manner in which one starts formal courtship proceedings in the internet age? Get off me. He just seemed like an interesting person.”

Cora leaned close enough to the phone to croon, “You liiiike him.”

Derek found himself wishing that she were actually there, just so he could cover her whole face with his hand and shove her away. “You are both the worst. Now leave me alone, I have to cover this stupid class for Simpson.”

“So we saw,” Laura said in her most annoying big sister voice.

“Have fun with your gross worms!” Cora called from the background again.

“They’re Sphingid moths!” Derek protested over their laughter, but Laura had already hung up.

***

For a person who was supposed to be on sabbatical to finally finish his required book for tenure consideration, Derek was certainly still finding himself with a lot of regular obligations. Barely a month into his “free” semester and he’d already done two guest lectures and always seemed to have to wade through the same amount of email every morning as he ever did.

“This wouldn’t be happening if I’d gone to Costa Rica to live in a cabin in the rainforest without internet access like I wanted to,” he muttered, scowling at the “revise and resubmit” email his co-author had forwarded him. _Can you do this? I’m teaching two full courses this semester._ “Yeah, sure, let me get right on that.”

He paused to wonder if it would be less weird to be talking to himself in his empty apartment if he got a fish. A cat would probably be better, but he was pretty sure his lease didn’t allow it.

He opened a new tab to start researching fish tank requirements, but got sidetracked into a movie instead. He’d answered all his email, after all; he deserved a break. Mental preparation for looking at that R&R letter. (Maybe there were other reasons an internet-less cabin would have been better for his productivity besides just the ability to avoid his colleagues.)

> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch 2h  
>  Finally got to see Kingsmen 2. Trying to remember the last time I saw a lep in film who wasn’t Victorian or a serial killer. #LepRep  
>  |  
>  Speaking of which, where’s my lep!Harry Hart AU? Out looking for something rare one day and gets caught up in some Kingsmen operation entirely by accident.  
>  |  
>  I’d write it myself, but I am fortunately past the days of hardcore procrastinating my dissertation. #SendLinks #IDontWantToReviseThisArticle
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles 10m  
>  _Replying to_ @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  I can’t vouch for the scientific accuracy of any of these, but I can write a mean AO3 search string. archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=…
> 
> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch 4m  
>  _Replying to_ @justcallmestiles  
>  I don’t think my co-author is going to thank you for that link, but I certainly appreciate it.
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles 1m  
>  _Replying to_ @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  Procrastinators gotta stick together. #IGotYourBack

*****  

> **Direct Messages**
> 
> **Cora Hale** @corahalestormy  
>  I’m sending you my next dental bill. Your nerd flirting is giving me cavities.
> 
> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  WE’RE NOT FLIRTING.

***

“So who’s this guy you’re talking to on Twitter all the time now?” Scott asked, out of nowhere and quite rudely, in Stiles’ opinion, since he was trying to coordinate a raid group in Destiny, an activity that was already enough like herding cats, what with people now spread across three time zones plus Hawaii, and he really didn’t need distracting inquiries into his personal life, thank you very much.

“Just a guy. I saw him on TV and now we tweet. The miracles of the internet. Danny! Are you joining our party or not?”

“I need like… ten minutes to finish up this quest and then I’ll jump in, yeah,” Danny replied, and then switched off his mic again.

“See?” Scott said. “We’ve got ten minutes. I want details.”

Stiles switched to his inventory screen and started irritably swapping around his armor. “There are no details to give. The entirety of our communication is there for your perusal.”

“I think you should ask him out.”

Stiles opened up the armor shader menu and tried to find the most obnoxious color combination possible, just to torture Scott for the rest of the evening. “I know you love being in love, buddy, but he works at a butterfly center in Florida.”

“Well, like you said, miracles of the internet. Long-distance relationships are a thing.”

“What the actual fuck, Scott?”

“It’s just, you don’t actually get interested in someone that easily!” Scott protested.

“Please,” Stiles scoffed. “I am so not picky.”

“Lie. You find lots of people vaguely attractive, and almost no one actually interesting.”

“He’s right,” Danny confirmed, joining the conversation again as Stiles spluttered. “Stiles, you should check Twitter, your guy’s gonna be at a conference in Cali in like two weeks.”

“What?” Stiles dropped his controller and grabbed for his phone, then narrowed his eyes at the TV screen, not that they could see him. “Danny, did you seriously just pause your quest to check Derek out on Twitter?”

“Of course,” Danny said, utterly unrepentant.

“You’re holding up the raid!”

“Yeah,” sniped Jackson, who had apparently logged in while Stiles was distracted. “Some of us don’t have all night.”

“Shut up, Jackson, you haven’t even been here,” Stiles said, although without much heat, since they’d actually all agreed on a time and Jackson wasn’t technically late, though they _could_ have started earlier if he’d happened to show up.

Jackson sniffed. “ _I_ actually have a life, unlike some of you losers. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Finally. Okay, Scott, get Kira and Allison added into our chat party and let’s go.”

“Sure… Oh my god, Stiles, what are you _wearing_?”

***

Two raids and an unfortunate amount of Mountain Dew later, Stiles opened up his DMs and hovered uncertainly over the New Message button. “Come on, Stilinski, just do it. The worst that will happen is he’ll say no.”

> **Direct Messages**
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles  
>  Hey, so I saw that you were going to be at a conference out near me soon and I wondered if you might want to meet up.  
>  If you’ll have time, I mean.  
>  I don’t know what entomology conferences are like.

“Ugh.” Stiles threw his phone across the couch and rubbed at his eyes. “Super smooth, Stiles. You’re a total catch.”

There was no point waiting for a reply; it was 4 a.m. on the East Coast now. He pulled at his hair in frustration for a few seconds and then stumbled off to the bathroom to get ready for bed. The sooner he went to sleep, the sooner he could wake up and get the inevitable personal humiliation over with.

***

“I don’t see what the problem is.”

“I’ve only got one night free, Laura! I have that stupid mixer I’m basically required to attend on Thursday, and then there’s that award dinner for my advisor on Saturday, and then I have to catch the red-eye back on Sunday. Friday is my only free time, and I was using it to see you and Cora.”

“So go out with him instead.”

“I… you don’t mind?”

“No, we don’t mind! Oh my god, Derek, we’ve been trying desperately to get you to go out with _anyone_ at all ever since you broke up with that witch Jennifer, and that was like two years ago.”

“I’m glad to see your standards for me are so high,” Derek said dryly.

“Our standards for you are extremely high, you just never give us anything to work with.”

“I am not your pet project, Laur.”

“You keep telling yourself that, _Der_.”

“Okay.” Derek took a breath and let it out. “Okay, fine, I’ll meet up with Stiles. You and Cora will have to entertain yourselves.”

“I think we’ll manage.”

> **Direct Messages**
> 
> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  That would be cool. My last panel ends at 4:30 on Friday, so maybe meet at 5?  
>  And by meet I mean you picking me up, because I won’t have a car.  
>  Sorry.
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles  
>  Awesome! No problem. I’ll see you then!

***

“Scott, Scott, what do I do?”

“Uh, go to dinner?”

“I mean, I know that, I just never thought he’d say yes! What do I _do_?”

“Go to dinner _and_ a movie?”

“Next thing you know, you’re going to suggest bowling. You’re no help. I’m calling Lydia.”

“I mean, bowling worked pretty well for me. But you know full well I have no idea how I ever got either Allison or Kira to date me.”

“Truly a mystery of the modern era.”

“Love you, too, buddy.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

***

Technically, Derek knew what Stiles looked like, because Stiles was not averse to posting the occasional selfie on Twitter. Selfies, as it turned out, were entirely insufficient to the task of capturing the reality of Stiles; Derek could already tell from the other side of the hotel lobby. Stiles was hovering nervously near the potted plants by the entrance, clearly trying to stay out of the flow of traffic but still somehow managing to pace in an area about a foot square, flipping his phone over and over in his hand.

Mindful of Cora’s insistence that his face defaulted to off-puttingly grumpy if he wasn’t paying attention, he put on what he hoped was a friendly smile and steeled himself to meet a new person.

 _He’s not new, you’ve been talking to him for weeks, everything is fine_ , he reminded himself. It didn’t actually make him less nervous.

“Stiles? Hey.”

“Derek!” Stiles fumbled his phone in surprise, even though he’d clearly been waiting expectantly, but managed to catch it at the last second and shove it in his pocket. “Hi! Hey. Um.” Color bloomed on his cheeks as he offered his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. In person, I mean. For real.”

Derek’s smile felt much more natural as he reached out to take Stiles’ hand. “You, too.”

Stiles seemed to relax a bit at that and grinned at him. “Internet friendships are weird like that, right? Where you feel like you already know the person so well, but then realize you’ve never really met them?”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed, and then winced as a thought occurred to him. “Um. Just be aware Twitter has probably given you a false sense of how much I talk.”

“Well, if anything, it underrepresents my own loquaciousness, so I guess we’ll balance out. Seems like a good match, huh?”

Looking at the way Stiles’ eyes seemed to sparkle warmly even in the shitty lobby lighting, Derek found himself fervently hoping that was the case.

Stiles seemed to realize they were standing there smiling at each other like idiots at about the same time Derek did, and fiddled with the open cuffs of his shirt before gesturing over his shoulder at the door. “So. Should we get out of here?”

“Yeah, let’s.”

***

The thing was…

The thing was, Derek didn’t like people, as a general rule. He liked his sisters okay; he liked his more extended family fine as long as he could go somewhere else when they got really loud; he liked his colleagues as long as they talked about work; but he did not like trying to make new friends or go on dates, because it always ended up being a lot of excruciating fumbling for conversational topics once he’d let a silence stretch on just a bit too long.

Talking to Stiles was nothing like that. Talking to Stiles in person was just like talking to Stiles on Twitter, with just as many odd side-jaunts in the conversation, but now with more hand gestures and no pauses for typing or real-life interruptions.

“So why Information Sciences?” he asked Stiles in a conversational lull just after they’d handed the dessert menus back to their server.

Stiles responded with a wry twist of his lips. “Honest answer? Because I’ve spent so many years trying to learn how to organize things in my own brain that this seemed easy. Not that that’s the answer I’m planning to give to my thesis committee or future employers.” He stopped spinning his coffee cup around in its saucer long enough to take a sip. “Why butterflies?”

Derek smiled over the rim of his own coffee cup. “They’re pretty.” And then he let the smile edge toward wicked, which felt distinctly odd on his face. “Plus, once I got into actually studying it, I discovered all lepidopterists really do is talk about sex all day.”

Stiles only just managed to avoid snorting coffee out of his nose. Derek felt ridiculously proud.

***

The evening had gone so much better than Stiles expected. He had rarely—possibly never—met someone who seemed so genuinely interested in what he had to say, not to mention willing to follow him down whatever divergent conversational pathway his brain shunted him down. They were almost back at the conference hotel now, and Stiles didn’t want the night to end. His fingers started tapping nervously on the Jeep’s steering wheel as he tried to figure out how to say goodbye in a way that really meant “I want to talk to you forever.”

“I wish we could just keep talking,” he blurted out as they pulled into the drop-off area. Because of course he did.

“Me, too,” said Derek. “Um. Do you want to come in?”

Stiles fidgeted in his seat and looked forlornly at the clock in his dash. “You have no idea how much I _want_ to, but I’ve got kind of a drive to get home and I shouldn’t leave it too late or the adrenaline will wear off before I get all the way there and I’ll regret it.”

Derek narrowed his eyes at him. “How long of a drive?”

“Um. Like ninety minutes?”

“You drove that far to take me out to dinner?” Derek exclaimed, apparently horrified.

“I wanted to see you!” He looked at Derek hopefully. “It was worth it, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, of course, but you shouldn’t have gone so out of your way.”

“No, I should have. I just wish I didn’t have to leave, is all.”

“You don’t have to,” Derek said.

Stiles raised quizzical eyebrows.

“I don’t… I don’t like sharing a room at conferences. So you could, you know, stay. If you don’t have to be back in time for something tomorrow.”

Stiles stared at him in surprise for so long Derek started to look uncomfortable, and he hastily slammed the Jeep back into gear. “Yes. Yes! Hell yes. Just let me figure out where to park.”

***

There were other people in the elevator on the way up to Derek’s floor, several of whom Derek recognized in a vague kind of way and thus had to do his patented “my sister the lawyer taught me how to schmooze when I entered grad school and now I have to do this on pain of death” polite smile at them, but Stiles hooked their pinkies together down where no one else could see and was very clearly trying not to laugh at what passed for entomological small talk, so for once it didn’t seem so bad.

When they finally made it into his room, he let himself do what he’d been wanting to since he first spotted Stiles in the lobby downstairs and crowded him back against the door. “Hi,” he said, like the loser with no sense of how to talk to people he truly was at heart.

Stiles just relaxed into the door and smiled at him. “Hi,” he said back, and then reached up to cup Derek’s jaw and pull him in for a kiss, and it was perfect.

They didn’t leave the door for a while.

Eventually they managed to stumble all the way to the bed, though, at which point Derek came to a realization. “I don’t, uh, I don’t have anything,” he said into a mutual pause to catch their breath.

Stiles drew back ever so slightly and raised his eyebrows in faux shock. “Did you not _just_ tell me at dinner that lepidopterists do nothing but sit around thinking about sex all day?”

“Well, I have to confess, we really do a lot more talking about it than actually having it.”

Stiles snorted his laughter into Derek’s shoulder and then kissed him soundly. “I seriously don’t care. We were just supposed to be having dinner, after all. Everything from here on out is winging it.”

Things had devolved from there into an argument over what technically constituted getting to second versus third base. Derek didn’t think he’d ever laughed so much in bed; certainly not when anything approaching sex was involved.

Later, with Stiles curled up on his shoulder and some late-late show on low in the background that neither of them was paying any attention to, Derek found himself lamenting how his sabbatical semester seemed to be slipping through his fingers. “I had half a plan to run away to Costa Rica, but in the end it seemed like too much work to make all the arrangements and pack. But now everyone knows I’m still around, and they always have just one thing for me to do, the quickest favor, they promise.”

Stiles shrugged and draped himself more comfortably across Derek’s chest, looking halfway asleep. “So don’t be in town. You don’t have to go all the way to Costa Rica to be out of reach.”

“Yeah?” Derek smiled into Stiles’ hair. “Where do you suggest I go?”

“I dunno, I hear California has nice weather.”

“You know, I think I’ve heard that. My sisters might have mentioned it once or twice.”

“See?” Stiles mumbled. “’s a good idea. All settled.”

Derek fell asleep smiling.

The next morning, for the first time in his professional career, Derek actually blew off attending a conference session, which was hardly a scandal, but felt momentous to him. Really, by the standards of any of the steamy academic conference hookups Derek had ever heard gossip about, what he and Stiles had actually done barely qualified. Nevertheless, when he had tried to say goodbye to Stiles awkwardly in the lobby after their rather late breakfast, Stiles had just yanked him in by his conference lanyard for a very thorough kiss, followed by a blinding grin and “Call me!”, and Derek was left standing there thinking he could probably write a very interesting paper about the migratory path of rumors through an entomological conference.

He found he really didn’t mind.

***

> **Derek Hale** @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  @justcallemestiles Here’s that article I was telling you about at dinner the other night. [wired.com/2013/12/this-is-not-a-penis/](https://www.wired.com/2013/12/this-is-not-a-penis/)
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles 1m  
>  _Replying to_ @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  They make an excellent point. Phalloblaster is definitely the superior name for that scientific instrument.
> 
> **Cora Hale** @corahalestormy  
>  _Replying to_ @AllHaleTheMonarch and @justcallmestiles  
>  …you just sent him a link to an article all about inflating moth sex organs. I know you. This is how you flirt. You two had BETTER be dating now.
> 
> **Stiles Stilinski** @justcallmestiles  
>  _Replying to_ @corahalestormy and @AllHaleTheMonarch  
>  Okay 1) who wouldn’t find that article fascinating? And also 2) we totally are.

***

 **From** : j.simpson@ento.uf.edu  
**To:** d.hale@ento.uf.edu  
**Subject:** Guest Lecture

Hey Derek,

The students really seemed to appreciate your last lecture. I was wondering if you’d be available to do another one next week?

Thanks in advance,  
Jorge

 **To:** j.simpson@ento.uf.edu  
**From:** d.hale@ento.uf.edu  
**Subject:** Out of Office Reply

Thanks for contacting me. I will be in California with only intermittent email access until August 2. I’ll do my best to get back to you as soon as possible, but in the case of time-sensitive questions, please contact the departmental secretary, who can direct you to another qualified faculty member.

Sincerely,  
Derek Hale

**Author's Note:**

> *Butterfly calligraphy poster in the graphic by my uncle.


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